Tuesday, November 22, 2016

I listened as they called my President a Muslim.I listened as they called him and his family a pack of monkeys.I listened as they said he wasn't born here.I watched as they blocked every single path to progress that they could.I saw the pictures of him as Hitler.I watched them shut down the government and hurt the entire nation twice.I watched them turn their backs on every opportunity to open worthwhile dialog.I watched them say that they would not even listen to any choice for Supreme Court no matter who the nominee was.I listened as they openly said that they will oppose him at every turn.I watched as they did just that.I listened.I watched.I paid attention.Now, I'm being called on to be tolerant.To move forward.To denounce protesters.To "Get over it."To accept this...I will not.I will do my part to make sure this great American mistake becomes the embarrassing footnote of our history that it deserves to be.I will do this as quickly as possible every chance I get.I will do my part to limit the damage that this man can do to my country.I will watch his every move and point out every single mistake and misdeed in a loud and proud voice.I will let you know in a loud voice every time this man backs away from a promise he made to them.Them. The people who voted for him.The ones who sold their souls and prayed for him to win.I will do this so that they never forget.And they will hear me.They will see it in my eyes when I look at them.They will hear it in my voice when I talk to them.They will know that I know who they are.They will know that I know what they are.Do not call for my tolerance. I've tolerated all I can.Now it's their turn to tolerate ridicule.Be aware, make no mistake about it, every single thing that goes wrong in our country from this dayforward is now Trump's fault just as much as they thought it was Obama's.I find it unreasonable for them to expect from me what they were entirely unwilling to give."

Friday, July 08, 2016

These are the words you won't hear from our leaders:

The killers (cops & civilians) are not reflective of their communities. Crazy reckless people with guns are the problem. Lack of common sense and out-of-control anger are the problem. 300,000,000 killing machines in the USA are a big problem. We are often our worst enemy when we show disrespect towards others.

Thursday, June 02, 2016

Art: This coming school year will be my 15th year of teaching art. I haven't made any new art in years, besides some examples of lessons for school. Currently there're 2 ideas for my next project: one is an assemblage, found-object, abstract sculpture inspired by Prince, tentatively entitled "Purple Rain, Rurple Pain." Another is a large (4'x6') black & white charcoal pastel drawing of our 5 cats (Kathy the Krazy Kat Lady Hashtag CatLivesMatter.) I don't usually work this big, so this will be a stretch and a good challenge. Time to reinvent myself.

Music: My idea of a supergroup/ fantasy band would comprise of Beck, Nina Simone, Beastie Boys, Pylon and New Order. I'm also thinking of making a semi-giant percussive instrument a-la Klimchak-style gamelan ensemble of pots and pans & everything including the kitchen sink. Why not?

Blogging: Can you believe that I've been doing this blog thing here since 2002? That's 14 fricking years and counting. Some days are more enjoyable and inspiring than others but the point is I keep on keepin' on. I don't really care if anyone is reading it or not. I do it for me, like the great Heisenberg once said.

People: I've been reminiscing about these famous people/ celebrities that I personally encountered over the years, either by accident or while I was on the job. We were literally face-to-face, a few feet away from each other. Just off the top of my head, here's a short list: Carl Lewis, Houston, Texas 1986. Cyndi Lauper, Portland, Maine, 1991. Cheri Jones, Baltimore, Maryland, 1993. Michael Moore, Marietta, Georgia, 1999. Elton John, Atlanta, 1998. Heather Headley, ATL, who played Aida at the Alliance Theatre where I was a sound tech. Evander Holyfield, 2012, at the airport waiting for our shuttle bus. And of course there are various Broadway Tony award-winning regional theater designers like Natasha Katz, her husband Dan Moses Schrieir, Don Holder and others. I've actually had conversations with these folks.

Humor: We all need a little humor in our life. As I get older I find that I appreciate all kinds of comedy including the lowbrow juvenile sophomoric moronic types. Life's too short, man.

Sports: The running streak is still going. I'm on Day 923 of running a minimum of a mile a day. I keep track of it on dailymile.com. I try to run at least 3 miles or a 5K, like I did today. The sweet spot is around 4 miles or 40 minutes. No half-marathon or marathon silliness for this boy. I run for the joy of being alive and being able to move from one location to the next. I run for fitness. I run just to keep myself from being stagnant. I do my best thinking while running. The streak is a way of keeping myself motivated.

Saturday, April 09, 2016

Back in my high school days (33+ years ago), a Friday night ritual for me was driving to a Tower Records store to check out new music on one of those listening stations. There was a Tower on El Cajon Blvd by San Diego State University. The other store was downtown, closer to the Sports Arena. Then in college I often stopped at the Tower in Mountain View (San Jose/ Santa Clara area) halfway between Fremont and Santa Cruz, almost every weekend on my drive back to school from the visit home with my family in the Bay Area. I got mostly cassette tapes or singles of bands like Depeche Mode, Yaz, New Order or Tears For Fears. For some reason I didn't listen to many American groups at the time, the mid 80s. Camper Van Beethoven and Pylon were a few exceptions. I remember once visiting the Tower Records in New York City, 4th and Broadway I think in 1991, which also was the last time I talked to Carlos Tabakoff, who was a music director at KZSC-FM, the radio station of UC Santa Cruz. He got a job at CMJ in Manhattan and moved there the same year I started working at Portland Stage in Maine. I was shocked to hear that he passed away recently. Back then I was delivering some sound equipment and called him to see if we could meet somewhere. I had to drive back to Portland with the company van that day so couldn't stick around and Carlos said he can't believe that I'm "dissing" him like that. I didn't even know what that meant at the time. Carlos was probably my same age, or possibly even a few years younger. I can still hear his Brazilian accent and see that coy smile/ smirk on his face. He was a sweet and charming fellow with an extensive knowledge of the international music scene. We would talk for hours about all kinds of music. I moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 1994. Boy was I glad to find a Tower Records store in the Lenox Square in the Buckhead area. It was conveniently located in a corner next to Bally Fitness, not too far from the exit off I-85, and close to Buford Highway, where we go for Vietnamese food all the time. I'd go there maybe twice a month, sometimes more when I was working on certain shows to get sound effects CDs, soundtracks, blank tapes, magazines, stickers and the free Pulse! magazines. I was in a couple of issues of Pulse! magazine-one of those DIDs (desert island discs) lists- and favorite world music recommendations. I remember like it just happened last year. How is it possible that twenty some years had just gone by in a blur? Needless to say, I was extremely saddened when Tower Records went bankrupt and suddenly closed all their stores including the Lenox one in 2006. Seemed overnight, without any warning. One weekend we woke up, and there was a "Going Out of Business" Sale. Tonight as I was surfing the TV and came across a documentary on Showtime entitled All Things Must Pass, I could really identify with the heart-wrenching commentaries by the employees who were let go after working there for 30 years. Tower Records was like a close favorite faithful family friend to us music aficionados. Many fans of the store mourn its passing. We were devastated. It was the first time I heard the term No Music, No Life! Recently I heard my nieces and nephews saying No Wi-Fi, No Life and it amused me to no end. But just as George Harrison sings All Things Must Pass, life must go on... Nowadays, we could just peruse and get whatever we want/need online at the interwebs and you can do almost everything with a few clicks on Google. But you just cannot replace that tactile intimate feeling when you're in the store browsing the record albums, touching the cassette tapes, reading the books, the zines and the posters. You know, the good old golden days. Now I sound like a grumpy old man. GrandPa. Gramps. What I learned from the documentary was that there're currently 85 Tower Records stores still in operation in Japan today. Eighty five! And they couldn't keep just ONE store open here in America?

Day 11 Work on the other hand. Pick a medium you're comfortable with, then work with your non dominant hand-if you're usually favor your right hand then only use your left hand and vice-versa.

11/366 (used my left hand only)

David Bowie passed away last night so this is a sort of tribute from me. Today I'm calling all of our 5 cats Ziggy. Been listening to Slacker Radio's Feature Artist Top 33 station all day long at school. When the kids heard me play this station instead of the usual Kidz Bop Kids station, I told them that an icon in music for the past 50 years had just died. They said: David who?

So these are my favorite songs, in no particular order (from all of his 27 previous albums), I haven't heard his latest release which just came out last week:

Sunday, January 03, 2016

Day 3- Make something out of paper, but don't use scissors or glue or draw on it. What now?

Found some scrap tissue paper and decided to weave the strips using a warm/cool color combo. It was a challenge not being able to cut with scissors or use any glue. The hand ripping of the hand was not easy as tissue paper is very fragile and sensitive. An hour went by quickly.

Saturday, January 02, 2016

Day 2 - What's your favorite animal? Use it as your inspiration today.

My cat Georgia. Saw the contour of her profile and it resembles the thumbs up of my left hand so I decided to draw from observation. Will come back later for another project possibly morphing her head into the fist and her ear is the thumb.

Friday, January 01, 2016

2015 is gone with the wind in the new South.Day 1 "The first step is the hardest, so start small today and make something that fits in the palm of your hand using only the materials in your immediate environment."

I am going to make something every day for the next 366 days since 2016 is a leap year. Here is the first project of the year. It's relief collage using bottle caps, hot glue, colored pencils and construction paper crayons on a piece of scrap black mat board. The focal point is the tiny red hand from a beer bottle cap. I think I'm going to make the HAND the motif. Will see how this is going to work out in the next few projects. The only rule is: there are NO RULES!

Thursday, December 31, 2015

So it's 2016 New Year's Eve. I decided to compile several lists of favorites, not just for this year but my all-time favorite music artists and film score composers. Why? Just because I feel like it.

Music artists/ Groups:

Nina Simone

The The

Beastie Boys

Supertramp

Violent Femmes

New Order

Pixies

Dead Can Dance

Beck

Film Composers:

Ennio Morricone

Thomas Newman

Carter Burwell (Coen Bros.)

Danny Elfman (Tim Burton)

Michael Kamen (Brazil)

Ryuichi Sakamoto

David Holmes

Alexandre Desplat

Antonio Sanchez (Birdman)

Cities

Portland, Oregon

Portland, Maine

Madison, Wisconsin

Asheville, North Carolina

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Burlington, Vermont

Santa Cruz, California

Seattle, Washington

Boulder, Colorado

And one more thing...

A note that I reposted last year from Neil Gaiman:

Be kind to yourself in the year ahead.

Remember to forgive yourself, and to forgive others. It's too easy to be outraged these days, so much harder to change things, to reach out, to understand.

Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.

Meet new people and talk to them. Make new things and show them to people who might enjoy them.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

The GOP Debate (aka the War on Common Sense) is currently on CNN featuring Ding-Dong, Buffoon, Nincompoop, Nitwit, Jack-a-ninny, Twinkie, Doofus, Nimrod, and Knucklehead.

Almost forgot the kids' table, the opening act, another debate earlier tonight with four other candidates: Bozo, Fool-a-gape, Yahoo, and Dum-dum. Boy, all the egos on one stage in Sin City.

There's a kid named ISIS at our school. I realize that Isis is the Egyptian Goddess of Magic and Life. We also had someone named Jihad a few years back.
Live and let live. Different strokes for different folks I guess. Whatever.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Next week, we'll be playing kickball on Monday, basketball on Tuesday, tennis on Wednesday, volleyball on Thursday, and free-form ultimate frisbee on Friday...You do not need to know how to play any of these sports, just dress to impress and don't be tardy to the...party.

Remember to badge in by 7:15 am... Orange is NOT my New Black yo.... That is all...